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Remember: Cuban Missile Crisis

Fifty years ago, President John F. Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev nearly waged nuclear war over Cuba.

By JOHN HILTON Daily Record/Sunday News

Updated:
11/16/2012 04:52:08 PM EST

York, PA -

Kathy Tittnich remembers looking out her parents' front door on a warm August day in 1957 and seeing her blind date for the first time.

He was a cocky 16-year-old, more a boy than a man. Arms folded, Mike Rodeheaver leaned against the porch.

"I took one look at him and I just knew I was going to marry this kid," she said.

But bumpy roads lay ahead as the couple navigated their way to independence. Kathy went to Uniontown School of Nursing in Uniontown, graduating as a registered nurse in 1961.

Mike worked for his father for a year before enlisting in the Air Force in July 1959. He was sent to Panama. At that time, nobody realized the role Cuba would play in the Cold War chess game between the United States and the Soviet Union.

By July 1962, the two countries were heading for a full-scale showdown over the tiny Communist island. Rodeheaver was home on leave that month and asked Tittnich to marry him.

The couple, who live in Shrewsbury Township, planned a mid-October wedding in Cleveland, where Tittnich's parents lived. As the big day drew near, tensions escalated in Cuba.

On Aug. 10, CIA Director John McCone sent a memo to President John F. Kennedy warning that Soviet medium-range ballistic missiles would be deployed in Cuba.

By early October, the two superpowers were on a collision course. When U.S. spy planes confirmed the existence of Soviet missiles on Oct. 14, the Rodeheaver-Tittnich nuptials were off.

"As time went by, of course, all leaves were canceled," Rodeheaver said. "Then it got real bad when the 15th of October came up and it looked like it could be nuclear war any day."

'Unlike anything I had seen'

Rodeheaver's assignment was to fly to Guantanamo Bay and pick up military dependents and fly them to Florida. The flights were heavily supported by fighter escorts in the air and additional planes on the ground, he said.

Mike Rodeheaver, left, and his wife Katherine at their home in Shrewsbury Township Monday November 5, 2012 They will celebrate their 50th anniversary December 22. They wedding was delayed because of the Cuban Missile Crisis. YORK DAILY RECORD/SUNDAY NEWS - PAUL KUEHNEL (Paul Kuehnel)

"U.S. Navy ships were in a picket line around Cuba to block the Russian freighters," Rodeheaver writes in a summary of his experiences. "It was unlike anything I had seen since joining the Air Force."

Through it all, Rodeheaver and his crewmates expected a Russian missile attack on the Panama Canal. "We felt that was just an easy target," he said.

Back home, Tittnich waited calmly for news.

"I don't remember being panicked or anything," she said. "I think I felt like everything was going to turn out all right. When you're that age, you think you're invincible."

Although public perception is the crisis lasted 13 days, ending when Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev announced over Radio Moscow that he had agreed to remove the missiles from Cuba, the blockade did not end until Nov. 20.

Mike Rodeheaver, right, and his wife Katherine when they were married in December 1962. They wedding was delayed because of the Cuban Missile Crisis. YORK DAILY RECORD/SUNDAY NEWS - PAUL KUEHNEL (Paul Kuehnel)

At that point, some military leaves were granted.

"My commander knew I had this wedding thing going on, so I was one of the first ones granted," Rodeheaver said.

Nuclear crisis averted, the couple discussed a new wedding date.

"I said 'Let's just wait until spring,'" Kathy said. "But he said, 'No, let's get married at Christmastime.'"

So the wedding, planned as a small, family affair, was rescheduled for Dec. 22 in Cleveland. A Dec. 21 snowstorm added another wrinkle to the plan.

"It was like, 'Oh my, somebody is trying to tell us something,'" Kathy said with a laugh.

Half-century

Mike Rodeheaver spent nine years in the Air Force and another 17 years in the Reserves. He might have become a career military man, but Kathy had other ideas.

U.S. President John F. Kennedy reports to the nation on the status of the Cuban crisis from Washington, D.C. on Nov. 2, 1962. He told radio and television listeners that Soviet missile bases "are being destroyed" and that U.S. air surveillance would continue until effective international inspection is arranged. U.S. government conclusions about the missile bases, he said, are based on aerial photographs made Nov. 1. (AP photo)

A daughter was born in Mississippi and a son in New Hampshire. Once discharged, Rodeheaver went to work in the defense industry, with stints for General Electric, Westinghouse and General Dynamics.

His last job brought the Rodeheavers to York County. Mike worked in Maryland, but the couple didn't want to live there. So they settled in Jacobus, then moved to York for a time before purchasing a home in Shrewsbury Township.

They are in the process of selling the home and moving to Florida full time. A 50th anniversary celebration is planned there Dec. 28 with the entire Rodeheaver clan.

As Rodeheaver writes, "the marriage that almost didn't happen has lasted 50 years."

"We just sort of knew we were soul mates and always meant to be together," his wife added.

@jhilton32; 717-771-2024

About this series

The Remember oral history series is an ongoing feature that challenges readers to remember poignant moments in personal, local and national history. Recent topics included:

Reader memories

Jessica Buck, 70, of Shrewsbury

"At the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, I was living in New York State. We had a senator, Sen. Kenneth Keating, who in April 1962, told the Kennedy administration that missile silos were being set up in Cuba. The Kennedy administration called him a liar and the press buried the story.

"Then along comes October ... and the Soviets are putting in missile bases in Cuba, so then we have this big confrontation. ... There was a recent article ... by Peter Orsi, Associated Press, saying how much of this was missed and that the bold brinkmanship by Kennedy in a lot of ways was exaggerated. The article says, while the crisis was full of tense moments, it was never the hair trigger that it was portrayed.

"Democrats won a huge landslide in the following election. On another note, when Kennedy gave his speech full of bravado to the American people, that speech was not broadcast outside of the United States. ... It was one of the biggest October surprises used for political gain that we've ever seen.

"In actuality, the Democrats risked this country's security from April to November because they wanted to hold this off for their October surprise."

Andrew Orsie, 71, Springettsbury Township

"I was a member of patrol squadron 11 out of Brunswick, Maine. ... We got sent to Argentia, Newfoundland. We did the North Atlantic control to check out all shipping going to Cuba from up north."

Gary Phillips, Springettsbury Township

"I was stationed in Germany at the time and we were on 24-hour alert for about a week or so because we never knew if we were going to war with Russia or not. ... Kennedy was just coming over to Germany at the time for a visit. Soon after, it happened. That is my memory of the Cuban Missile Crisis."

Chris Carman, 57, New Freedom

"I was a second-grade student at New Freedom Elementary School during the missile crisis. ... We weren't instructed to duck and cover below our desks as I suppose most children were. but we did have drills involving the entire school student body. All 240 of us were told to sit on the concrete floor with our backs against the painted brick wall of the ground floor access corridor.

"We sat in that cavernous hall for what seemed like days to elementary kids. I got in trouble with my teacher for asking why we were having that drill since I had read in my Weekly Reader that everything inside of a 30-mile radius of a nuclear blast would be destroyed. ...

"I was also upset with my dad because he couldn't find the time to build a fall-out shelter like many of my friends had. He worked six days a week, 12 hours a day delivering milk for Warner's Dairy in Red Lion."

Tom Steinfelt, 70, Windsor Township

"I was a radar man third-class on the destroyer U.S.S. Cony ... during the Cuban Missile Crisis. We were stationed about 300 miles southwest of Bermuda on Oct. 27, 1962, when our ship detected radar contact. It was a Soviet submarine later identified as B 59.

"Once the sub surfaced for about five hours, we tried to talk to them but to no avail. They charged their batteries and submerged. We were in the area for about 30 days patrolling for subs and freighters thought to have missiles aboard."

Leonard Conley, 73, Felton

"I was serving in the U.S. Army Fifth Infantry Division in Fort Carson. I was a PFC still in advanced infantry training. ... We had little TV or radio to listen to and we didn't really know much about what was going on, but we knew something was going on that was important. ... As I think about it, we had no training dealing with nuclear warfare and nuclear fallouts and so forth, so we would have been ill-prepared for that... That would have been a bad situation for us.

"Only after being released from the military and as I got older and doing reading and seeing some documentaries on television and so forth, did I come to understand the severity of the situation we were in. So I'm thankful we didn't have to go to Cuba. ... I'm glad it didn't escalate any further and President Kennedy called the bluff of Khrushchev and avoided this crisis."

Jim Kohler, West Manchester Township

"(I) was in the Navy during the Bay of Pigs ... on the U.S.S. Boston. (We) were down around Cuba and all the sailors were told to go below deck for awhile. Afterwards, they said that Khrushchev and Kennedy were on the ship and they were talking."

Charles Summers, 78, York

"I worked for a trucking company that was a transcontinental trucking company. We had no rights to haul freight in any of the southern states east of the Mississippi. However, we did have rights to haul class A explosives to any states in the 48 at the time. Our general office contacted us and said that we were going to haul 100 loads of class A explosives out of Letterkenny Army Depot. ...

"We had sleeper trucks that were two-man crews west of the Mississippi. None of the sleeper trucks were ever used east of the Mississippi ... They sent these sleeper trucks in here with empties. We had several local drivers that went to LD and loaded the ... missiles. ...

"These sleeper trucks would come out of the depot with loads of missiles going to Homestead Air Force Base in Florida. After we completed this move, we didn't haul 100, we probably hauled about 80. And after we completed the move in several days, then the Cuban Missile Crisis broke."

William J. Hesse, 65, Red Lion

"When I was 17, I served aboard the U.S.S. Fort Snelling ... and participated in the Cuban Missile Crisis. ... My job was driving 2.5-ton trucks hauling troops and supplies to the front lines. ... In 1980, while serving in the U.S. Coast Guard as a photojournalist, I served off the Florida coast as a reporter during the Cuban sea lift, which was my second trip down that way."

Myths about the crisis endure

The Associated Press recently published five myths about the Cuban Missile Crisis that endure 50 years later. They include:

Conventional wisdom: The crisis was a triumph of U.S. brinkmanship.

Reality: Historians say the resolution of the standoff was really a triumph of backdoor diplomacy.

Kennedy resisted pressure from aides advising that he cede nothing to Moscow and even consider a preemptive strike. He instead engaged in intense behind-the-scenes diplomacy with the Soviets, other countries and the U.N. secretary-general.

Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy met secretly with the Soviet ambassador on Oct. 27 and conveyed an olive branch from his brother: Washington would publicly reject any invasion of Cuba, and Khrushchev would withdraw the missiles from the island. The real sweetener was that Kennedy would withdraw Jupiter nuclear missiles from U.S. installations in Turkey, near the Soviet border. It was a secret pledge known only to a handful of presidential advisers that did not emerge until years later.

"As the historical record has expanded, the image of the resolute president has given way to the resolution president," Cuba analyst Peter Kornbluh wrote in an article in the November issue of Cigar Aficionado, an advance copy of which was made available to The Associated Press.

Nevertheless, the brinkmanship myth persists, with President George W. Bush in 2002 citing the missile crisis as a historical lesson in fortitude that justified a preemptive invasion of Iraq.

"The storyline is a lot easier that Kennedy stood steely-resolved, faced Khrushchev down and that's it," said Allison, a professor at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government and former senior defense adviser to several Democratic and Republican administrations. "If you hang tough enough the other guy will eventually yield -- that is actually the lesson that became part of the popular mythology."

Conventional wisdom: Washington won, and Moscow lost.

Reality: The United States came out a winner, but so did the Soviet Union.

The Jupiter missiles are sometimes described as nearly obsolete, but they had come online just months earlier and were fully capable of striking into the Soviet Union. Their withdrawal, along with Kennedy's assurance he would not invade Cuba, gave Khrushchev enough to feel he had saved face and the following day he announced the imminent dismantling of offensive weapons in Cuba.

Soon after, a U.S.-Soviet presidential hotline was established and the two nations initiated discussions that led to the Limited Test Ban treaty and ultimately the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

"The major lesson is the necessity of compromise even when faced with a crisis like that," said Robert Pastor, an international relations professor at American University and former national security adviser for Latin America under President Jimmy Carter.

Pastor said he had many discussions about the missile crisis over the years with his late father-in-law, Robert McNamara, who was Kennedy's defense secretary. Pastor said domestic politics made it tough for both Kennedy and successive presidents to heed that lesson, as evidenced by Kennedy's intense efforts to keep the deal secret.

President Barack Obama, for example, faces considerable pressure to maintain a tough line on Cuba. Among the issues are the U.S. embargo, demands for political change, an American government subcontractor imprisoned in Cuba as an alleged spy and five Cuban intelligence agents serving long sentences in the United States.

"Look at U.S.-Cuban relations right now," Pastor said. "I don't think Obama would consider a compromise, because the pressure on him that 'You gave in to the Cubans' is too great."

Conventional wisdom: It was a high-seas showdown.

Reality: It's true the missile crisis was full of tense moments. On Oct. 27, a U.S. warship dropped depth charges over a nuclear-armed Soviet sub and the Soviets shot down a U-2 spy plane over Cuba. It was "the darkest, most dangerous day of the crisis," Kornbluh said.

Yet after Kennedy on Oct. 22 announced a U.S. naval quarantine around the island to prevent more military equipment from arriving, Khrushchev recalled ships carrying nuclear equipment the following day, according to the 2008 book "One Minute to Midnight" by Michael Dobbs, which was based on newly examined Soviet documents.

That means that on Oct. 24, when Secretary of State Rusk made his famous "eyeball-to-eyeball" statement reacting to supposedly up-to-the-minute intelligence, the vessels were already hundreds of miles away, steaming home.

"This thing about eyeball-to-eyeball, it never was. That confrontation never took place," said Kornbluh, who is a Cuba analyst at the nongovernment National Security Archive, which has spent decades working to get missile crisis documents declassified.

Conventional wisdom: It was an intelligence coup for the CIA.

Reality: Along with being a day late on the turnaround by Soviet ships, the CIA missed several key developments that would have helped Kennedy and his advisers navigate the crisis.

The CIA learned late in the game about the ballistic missiles' presence in Cuba, and they were already operational by the time Kennedy was informed of their existence.

The agency was also unaware of other, tactical nuclear missiles in Cuba that could have been deployed against a U.S. attack. The Soviets had even positioned nuclear-tipped missiles on a ridge above the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay in preparation for an invasion.

"They were going to obliterate the base," Kornbluh said.

Conventional wisdom: The crisis lasted just 13 days.

Reality: This myth has been perpetuated in part by the title of Robert F. Kennedy's posthumous memoir, "Thirteen Days," as well as the 2000 movie of the same name starring Kevin Costner.

Indeed it was 13 days from Oct. 16, when Kennedy was first told about the missiles, to Oct. 28, when the Soviets announced their withdrawal.

But the "October Crisis," as it is known in Cuba, dragged on for another tense month or so in what Kornbluh dubs the "November Extension," as Washington and Moscow haggled over details of exactly what weapons would be removed.

The Soviet Union also had problems dealing with Fidel Castro, according to a Soviet document made public this month by Svetlana Savranskaya, a Russia analyst for the National Security Archive.

Deputy Premier Anastas Mikoyan traveled to Cuba that Nov. 2 and spent 20 days in tense talks with the Cuban leader, who was angry the Soviets had reached a deal without consulting him. Castro lobbied hard but unsuccessfully to keep the tactical nuclear weapons that the Americans had not learned about.

More about the Cuban Missile Crisis

Professor Peter B. Levy, chairman of the Department of History & Political Science at York College, says the Cuban Missile Crisis opened the door for improved communication between the superpowers.

That improved dialogue likely led to both sides agreeing to halt nuclear testing, Levy added.

"This was a potential confrontation between superpowers in which there hadn't been much dialogue, or any process for dealing with and resolving the conflict," Levy said. "I think that's why Kennedy's star rises. People see that he took us to the brink, but not over it."

While Kennedy drew criticism from both the right and the left, for different reasons, he came away from the crisis with favorable grades. Khrushchev did not fare as well.

"The hawks in Russia see this as a mistake by Khrushchev and he slowly disappears from office," Levy said.

Timeline

Here is a timeline of events leading up to and including the Cuban Missile Crisis:

1961:

Jan. 3: The U.S. terminates diplomatic relations.

April 17: "The Bay of Pigs" -- A group of Cuban exiles, backed by the U.S., invades Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in a failed attempt to trigger an anti-Castro rebellion.

Oct. 25: JFK sends a letter to Khrushchev placing the responsibility for the crisis on the Soviet Union.

Oct. 26: Khrushchev sends a letter to President Kennedy proposing to remove his missiles if Kennedy publicly announces never to invade Cuba.

Oct. 27: An American U-2 is shot down over Cuba killing the pilot, Major Rudolf Anderson.

Oct. 27: A U-2 strays into Soviet airspace, near Alaska, and is nearly intercepted by Soviet fighters.

Oct. 27: Kennedy sends Khrushchev a letter stating that he will make a statement that the U.S. will not invade Cuba if Khrushchev removes the missiles from Cuba.

Oct. 28: Khrushchev announces over Radio Moscow that he has agreed to remove the missiles from Cuba. In return, the US agrees to the withdrawal of US nuclear missiles from Turkey, ending the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Source: www.history-timelines.org.uk

DAILY RECORD / SUNDAY NEWS -- PAUL KUEHNEL
Mike Rodeheaver, left, and his wife, Katherine, at their home in Shrewsbury Township. The couple will celebrate their 50th anniversary Dec. 22.

DAILY RECORD / SUNDAY NEWS -- PAUL KUEHNEL
Mike and Katherine Rodeheaver on their wedding day in December 1962. Their wedding was delayed because of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

In this June 3, 1961, file photo, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and President John F. Kennedy talk in the residence of the U.S. Ambassador in a suburb of Vienna. The meeting was part of a series of talks during their summit meetings in Vienna. (AP photo)